The most common method of removing ice from the windshields and other windows of automotive vehicles is to manually scrape it off with a tool or implement having a sharp, blade-like cutting edge. In order to avoid scratching of the window the cutting edge should be softer than the tempered window glass. On the other hand it must be sufficiently hard to effectively separate or scrape the ice from the window.
Various blade shapes have been disclosed in the prior art, but the straight blade is still the most widely used configuration even though it is not entirely suited for scraping ice from the curved surfaces of windshields and rear windows of present day vehicles.
There is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,164,801 an ice scraper in which a straight blade is divided into a plurality of resilient scraping fingers. U.S. Pat. No. 3,133,301 describes a two-part ice scraper having a circular scraping element mounted to a flexible, dished body member, and U.S. Pat. No. 2,532,429 describes a windshield cleaning device having a plurality of concentric, circular scraping edges.